2025 Year in Review by the Numbers: The Magnificent Seven and the Pluralism of Taste

My Journey From Sports Analytics to Counting Jazz

I've always had a soft spot for statistics and rankings—especially those that try to say something more than just "what people like." This is probably a result of my rigorous mathematical-informatics education and the scientific research I conducted over a dozen years ago on classification and ranking methods in sports (Formula 1, cycling, team sports, among others). So when the opportunity arose to prepare a summary in the field of music, I took it without hesitation. The various radio and online charts I've had the chance to run, however, didn't provide nearly the same scale of material for analysis. I quickly realized that jazz listeners are wonderfully unpredictable compared to sports fans.

The starting point was the lists of the best or favorite albums of 2025, published in December and January as part of All About Jazz's Year in Review series (you can view the 46 lists, here).

The Democracy of Lists and the Scale of the Data

The lists were compiled by 42 people from the All About Jazz staff. In total, 428 albums appeared on them (including three released still in 2024). Each person listed between 8 and 58 albums, and the lists were deliberately non-ranked—albums were neither numbered nor ordered by quality (which I fully support). I particularly like this approach because it avoids the artificial top-down pressure I often see in rankings or charts. Sometimes there was only a division into "best/favorite" and "honorable mentions." Altogether, releases from more than 230 labels across several continents were included.

Searching for Consensus in the Chaos of Divergent Choices

For the purpose of the analysis, first, I extracted albums that appeared on more than one list. I must confess that was the moment my analytical instincts came back to life—I started counting, calculating and finally analyzing the data...

The Magnificent Seven (TOP 7 by Mentions)

• Of the Near and Far by Patricia Brennan (Pyroclastic Records)—9
• Belonging by Branford Marsalis (Blue Note Records)
• About Ghosts by Mary Halvorson, (Nonesuch Records)—8
• Consentrik Quartet by Nels Cline (Blue Note Records)—6
• After the Last Sky by Anouar Brahem (ECM Records)
• Painter Of The Invisible by Jaleel Shaw (Changu Records)
• Strange Heavens by Linda May Han Oh (Biophilia Records)—5



Strong Thirteen (4 mentions each)

• Solace of the Mind by Amina Claudine Myers
• Arboresque by Artemis
• Gadabout Season by Brandee Younger
• Figure In Blue by Charles Lloyd
• Trio Of Bloom by Craig Taborn / Nels Cline / Marcus Gilmore
• Thereupon by Fieldwork
• The Surrounding Green by Fred Hersch
• Abstraction Is Deliverance by James Brandon Lewis Quartet
• The Big Room by Joe Farnsworth
• Words Fall Short by Joshua Redman
• City Life: Music of Gregg Hill by Michael Dease
• Splash by Myra Melford
• Bone Bells by Sylvie Courvoisier & Mary Halvorson

Contributors of AAJ also selected one album to represent their list by means of its cover. Only one album was repeated in this role more than once—Patricia Brennan's Of the Near and Far (three times).



The Long Tail of Taste and the Statistics of Pluralism

The top album received nine mentions, the next two received eight each, followed by others with six and five mentions. Just behind them was a group of thirteen albums that each received four mentions—forming a clear second tier of consensus. These albums (TOP 20) come closest to representing a shared choice across the community. From these patterns emerged a kind of "agreement amid independence."



Further statistics are telling: 15 albums appeared three times, 64 appeared twice, while 329 were mentioned by only one person (77%). This is an almost extreme example of so-called right-skewed distribution, which very clearly illustrates the scale of diversity and the dispersion of tastes. At least two explanations are possible: either 2025 was a rich and rewarding year full of many gems, or the contributors simply have very individual and independent preferences.

The "uniqueness" coefficient—understood as the percentage of all mentions accounted for by TOP 7 albums—was 7.7%, which indicates a high level of "democracy" and a low level of "hit-ness." The coefficient of variation, that is a kind of a measure of dispersion, of approximately 70% points to strong pluralism of opinion (a term well known in the social sciences). The winner remains a phenomenon: 9 mentions against a "sea of single votes" is an impressive result, although mathematically it constitutes only about 1.5% of all mentions. The top three albums in such a democratic tally can therefore be considered truly exceptional.



Labels, Release Timing and the Fight for Visibility

Labels statistics are also telling (number of featured albums)

1. Cellar Music Group—27 (0 in TOP 20)
2. ECM Records—15 (2 in TOP 20)
3. Origin Records—13 (1 in TOP 20)
4. Blue Note Records—10 (5 in TOP 20)
5. Sunnyside Records
6. Edition Records—8 (0 in TOP 20)
7. Intakt Records—7 (2 in TOP 20)
Much further back is Pyroclastic Records—only four albums on the lists, but three of them in the TOP 20. Impressive efficiency—quality over quantity in action.

For years I've been wondering about the impact of release timing on presence in year-end summaries. In our TOP 7, as many as three albums were released in March (Anouar Brahem, Branford Marsalis Quartet, Nels Cline), and in our TOP 20 the largest number of releases fell in June (as many as six). The first half of the year vs. second half of the year split is 13 to 7 in favor of the first one, with only one TOP 20 album released in the final quarter (Patricia Brennan). The possible conclusion is simple, although not necessarily true: unless an album is an absolute masterpiece, an earlier release significantly increases its chances of being noticed. So, time really does matter more than most people realize.



Jazz in a Sea of Diversity

From this entire summary emerges a picture of the jazz scene as an exceptionally diverse space, resistant to simple "ranking" simplifications. There is no single dominant trend nor one obligatory canon—instead, listeners receive a broad spectrum of aesthetics and artistic personalities that coexist side by side. In the longer term, however, this also carries a certain risk: truly outstanding works may have an increasingly smaller chance of being noticed by a wider audience. At the same time, the results for 2025 show that despite this risk, certain albums are still capable of building a cross-community consensus within this sea of individual choices. These are precisely the ones that appeared in several lists and became common points among very different sensibilities. Statistics do not decide in any way what is "the best," but they do allow us to see what can unite listeners with very different tastes.

And since this year there will be new albums, new lists and new preferences, so everything can be recalculated from scratch—same curiosity, same joy. And that is the good news...

Comments